“Such were some of the parts, but how bring them together?”1 : The Literary Sibling as Dr Frankenstein in Pat Barker’s Toby’s Room
Harold Bloom’s highly influential model of the ‘anxiety of influence’— the agon between fathers and sons—and the haunting presence of the ‘myth’ of literary Modernism, which all succeeding generations of writers have had to contend with, may induce literary critics to view contemporary writers as th...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Polish Association for the Study of English
2022-12-01
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| Series: | Polish Journal of English Studies |
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| Online Access: | https://pjes.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/PJES_8-2_9_Wozniak.pdf |
| Summary: | Harold Bloom’s highly influential model of the ‘anxiety of influence’— the agon between fathers and sons—and the haunting presence of the ‘myth’ of literary Modernism, which all succeeding generations of writers have had to contend with, may induce literary critics to view contemporary writers as the ‘children’ or ‘grandchildren’ of their great Modernist precursors. While investigating the intertextual relationship between Pat Barker and Virginia Woolf, however, it is, I argue, far more useful to analyse Barker’s engagement with Woolf’s work in the context of Juliet Mitchell’s theories of sibling relationships (2003). The lateral aspect of Barker’s intertextual relationship with her precursor is best demonstrated through a detailed analysis of Toby’s Room (2012), whose title is a direct reference to Woolf’s third novel, Jacob’s Room (1922). Like Elinor Brooke, whose paintings express her desire for freedom from the oppressive absence of her dead brother, Toby, Barker attempts to „clear [some] imaginative space”2 for herself, to make some ‚room’ in which she can exist, by challenging a few of Woolf’s most influential views, as expressed in her fiction and in such works as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. Toby’s Room is thus the product of Barker’s combined admiration and hostility towards Woolf’s oeuvre—an ambivalent hommage in which Barker positions herself not as Woolf’s descendant, but as a literary sibling. By re-assembling various fragments of Woolf’s oeuvre, just as Elinor re-assembles the ‘pieces’ of her brother, Barker resurrects her precursor in such a way as to be able to simultaneously honour her and to allow her own literary self to exist. |
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| ISSN: | 2545-0131 2543-5981 |